Since being introduced in October 2015 the Revised Pay As You Earn (REPAYE) income-driven repayment plan has become increasingly popular as a way to pay back federal student loans. Despite its popularity, SLPs and other professionals pursuing Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) may be better off passing it by.

Part 1 of 2 posts focusing on recent SLP graduates starting their careers!

Congratulations! You’re the owner of a newly minted degree giving you access to a great career in speech and hearing sciences. Now what? The transition from college to a full-time career is exciting, a bit liberating and often overwhelming. Let’s talk about two financial areas where you should focus your attention as you job hunt this summer. Read more.

Rising costs, new laws, old laws, and complexity of coverage. It's no wonder that health insurance and its potential effect on personal finances is lurking on the edge of many people's consciousness. The good news is there are some options that can help put some control back into your hands.

Forget cleaning your home! It’s boring, and let’s be honest, in two weeks it’s going to be a mess again anyway. You’re busy helping people and only have so much time. This spring I suggest you clean up your finances. To help you get started, I offer six questions for you to ponder:

If your employer provides a pension, be happy. A pension provides a powerful retirement tool in your arsenal. The jovial folks at the Department of Labor and National Association of State Retirement Administrators estimate 85 percent of state and local government employees participate in a defined benefit pension. I’m looking at you, public school clinicians. If you work at a federally operated hospital (like a Veterans Affairs facility) or institution, this applies to you, too. Even many nongovernment-operated hospitals offer pensions.

“Well, I guess we’ll get there someday…maybe, haha. Until then, we’ve got the small things”

That was how my longtime girlfriend finished our conversation about some of the things we’re currently working towards; none of which are particularly exciting or exotic. In fact, most people have similar goals on the surface but dig deeper and they become uniquely ours for unique reasons.

You bought a house in late ’09 or ’10 after graduating college and getting a good job, maybe even starting a family. A few years later, with a rebound in both housing and the overall economy, your home is worth substantially more than what you owe on it....

Let’s start out with this, credit cards are not evil! In fact, debt as a financial instrument is not evil. It has many useful and reasonable purposes. To turn a phrase: debts don’t kill your finances; you kill your finances (by making bad choices).

I imagine that number will continue to climb in the years ahead. As you can imagine, many of those 40 million people have questions. To help out this group of people, we’re going to run through a bunch of possible ways to work towards repaying your student loans.

I work with and know many young professionals. One of the things I’m certain they hear about often is the importance of 401k’s. Whether or not they have a good understanding of them is a different question. However, there is one thing I’m absolutely certain young professionals do know and understand: Chipotle burritos. I’m about to use the latter to explain the former. I hope you’re impressed.

Have you ever wasted multiple minutes in a day wondering if there was an easy, simple way to stop all the unwanted pre-approved credit card offers from showing up in your mailbox? Probably not. Nevertheless, there is in fact an incredibly easy way to stop the continuous flow.